GPU shipmentsa in Q3 looking pretty good

Third quarter shipments of graphics processors jumped an amazing 21.2% over Q2, which was already a great quarter clearly signaling the holidays will be robust for PCs and the industry in general.

AMD showed the biggest jump in quarter-to-quarter growth at 30% followed by Intel at 21%. Intel shipped the most parts at 63 million, over twice as many as its nearest competitor Nvidia.

"A total of 119.45 million units were shipped in the third quarter, exceeding the record 111 million units that shipped in Q3, 2008," said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research in Tiburon, California. "So the market has caught up with, and exceeded, last year's highs. The crash of fall 2008 is now behind us."

This Quarter Market share

Last Quarter Market share

Growth Qtr-Qtr

This quarter last year Market share

Growth Yr-Yr

AMD

19.8%

18.4%

30.2%

20.6%

3.1%

Intel

52.7%

51.1%

25.2%

49.4%

14.6%

Nvidia

24.9%

29.2%

3.3%

27.8%

-4.0%

Matrox

0.0%

0.1%

-50.8%

0.1%

-70.0%

SiS

1.1%

0.4%

209.3%

1.2%

80.0%

VIA/S3

1.5%

0.8%

116.2%

0.9%

465.3%

Total

100.0%

100.0%

21.2%

100.0%

11.9%

Once again a record was broken and the growth from Q2 to Q3 was the largest in nine years.

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

Change Q2 to Q3

-0.48%

18.62%

16.07%

16.20%

11.59%

12.52%

11.58%

17.84%

21.24%

Portables lead the wayNotebook shipments led the market again topping out at almost 56 million units with discrete graphics processors jumping more than 36% over Q2 indicating what the OEMs think will be the hot sellers in Q4. Peddie notes that, "Integrated graphics in notebooks, which includes the popular netbooks, increased 27% over Q2 - a great gain but less than discrete. Netbooks will remain popular but they will not have the high market share they had during the recession when they were just introduced. Rather, consumers are expected to "buy up" in the next quarter.